When Life Gives You

We just picked a bumper crop of Meyer lemons from our tree, enough to share with neighbors and still have all the chicken piccata and lemonade we want. :) I will be juicing and grating the peel from most of what I keep to freeze for cooking and baking the next few months. Since lemons are now about a dollar a piece at the market there is much satisfaction in growing and harvesting our own.

I think I've also banished all the hateful, lingering demons of depression over 2025's troubles and stresses. It was a terrible year, but I did get through it, and it's over now. I expect there will be more of the same in 2026, but how well I manage them depends on my attitude. The lemons of the new year need to be made into something.

To start off on the right note I've created a new blog devoted to my thrifting and crocheting here. Writing about two things I'm passsionate about is fun, and gives me more room to express myself rather than brood over my diminishing abililities.

I'm also hoping to devote more space to new topics here on this blog, especially when it comes to positivity and self-care. If I can help others get through tough times, then that turns my own negative experiences into something useful, always a good thing.

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Stuff

After finding this Caron one pound skein of lovely peach yarn in my thrifted lot I raided my stash for two cakes of Mandala in Pegasus, which matches it perfectly. For practice and hand therapy I'm going to make another Worth Street Afghan with this free pattern , but this time I'll use the yarn that was recommended for it plus the one pound skein. I'm not quite ready to do the vintage/recycled linen quilt I had planned (still a bit too nervous about the idea), so I'm going to use some color therapy and make a quilt from these thrifted green fat quarters. I considered doing another Yellow Brick road patchwork pattern, but I might go with a split rail fence like this one.

Journal Find

This is a page from my 2010 poetry journal. My handwriting isn't the best, so I'll transcribe it: If my heart survives to tell all the secrets kept inside it will be an abalone shell in which the beauty did reside. But I think I will always be lost to the tides that rage in me . . . humbling and polishing . . . I don't write many self-portrait poems, but this one isn't too embarrassing. A bit overly dramatic, but the girl I was eleven years ago went through some tough times. I'm in a much more peaceful place today.

Watchable Farce

The k-drama Undercover High School is a series that brings a handsome spy to play a student at an elite private school where a legend about billions of gold hidden there persists. It's more silly slapstick comedy than anything, but has some surprising romantic and dramatic moments, too. Seo Kang-joon is one of my favorite Korean actors, and this is the first series he's made since finishing up his mandatory military service. He plays Jeong Hae-seong/ Jeong Si-hyun, an NIS agent who infiltrates a snobby elitist school to hunt down the gold. There are four urban legends connected to the treasure that he has to figure out, all under the too-watchful eye of his homeroom teacher, Oh Su-Ah (Jin Ki-joo) whom he eventually discovers was his elementary school love Oh Bong-ja (there's a lot of name changing in this series.) The hunt for the treasure is the highlight of this series, but the romance between the leads is cute, too (and not as taboo as you might think, given that...

Rayen

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